The purpose of this research is to investigate depressed mothers' influence on cognitive development of their children. It is hypothesized that a mother's depression interferes with her ability to serve as a mediator for her young child's cognitive development. Behavioral characteristics associated with depression might be expected to influence the mother's functioning in ways that would interfere with her ability to support the cognitive activity of her child. A woman's ability to maintain a shared attentional focus with her child, to respond adequately to the child's queries and to transmit information and thinking skills to her child is expected to be compromised when the woman is depressed. In this study these aspects of maternal behaviors are explored. Special emphasis is placed on the extent to which mothers impart facts and cognitive skills to their 2- to 3-year old children. These include facts about the physical, social and emotional worlds, methods for acquiring knowledge, methods for knowledge representation and for reasoning and problem solving. It is hypothesized that children whose mothers demonstrate low performance levels as cognitive mediators perform less well on I.Q. tests. The subjects are depressed and well mothers. I.Q. tests were administered to the children when they were between 5-7 years of age.